This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019 and 2020. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Checklist alignment: whether the practices associated with the HASS Lost and Found element are in place. These might not have a numeric data point that makes sense to collect and track.
  4. Data status: the state of the data received from the shelter, highlighting missing pieces and potential areas for improvement.
  5. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

Executive Summary

  1. RTH Rates for dogs did not change between 2019 and 2020 (around 28-29%), while cats doubles from 2.5% to 5%.
  2. While like most HASS shelters, return rates in the shelter slightly decreased with the pandemic, In-Field RTH for dogs has actually improved since the beginning of the pandemic, peaking around 12% in May-July 2020, which is higher than all other HASS shelters.
  3. There were 1847 strays dogs who got RTH in 2019 and 1451 in 2020. Assuming 50$ cost of daily care per dog, and since RTH dogs stay in the shelter 9 days less than strays with other outcomes on average, we can estimate that return-to-homes saved PACC \(1847*50*9=831,150\$\) in 2019 and \(1451*9*50=652,950\$\) in 2020.
  4. Most strays come in from the shelter’s ZIP code (85745) even after the animals with a found location listing the shelter’s address were removed (about 150 of those). Stray intake numbers gradually decrease with distance from the shelter.
  5. Except for the shelter’s ZIP code, the areas adjacent to it all stand out as having more strays found in them with roughly similar RTH rates. In the areas to the Northwest, 743 and 653, the RTH rates (visible in the middle tab) are lower than other close areas, which suggests a greater room for improvement.
  6. 37% of people who found a dog did so in the ZIP code in which they live. This suggests that many people bring pets they found away from their neighborhood (which does not mean the pet also went far from where it lives – it could be close to home and the finder was far from his).
  7. 67% of the 969 dogs for whom Found and Outcome ZIP codes were available were found in the ZIP code in which they live, assuming outcome ZIP for RTH dogs is the ZIP of the animal’s home.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species. RTH Rate is calculated as the portion of returned animals that came in as strays out of stray animals. Animals younger than 6 weeks are excluded (this could be easily changed).

Overall RTH Rate

This table covers all strays and RTHs. The rate for dogs remained fairly similar between 2019 and 2020, while for cats, even though these are few returns, the number was the same (49 compared to 51) although intake was cut down in half.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 2008 51 0.03
Cat 2020 958 49 0.05
Dog 2019 6481 1847 0.28
Dog 2020 4941 1451 0.29
Other 2019 26 1 0.04
Other 2020 37 3 0.08

Field RTH Rate

This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field (using subtype ‘FIELD’ or ‘FIELD OWN’). These are then split by RTH method between field (using outcome_subtype ‘FIELD’), shelter (all other values), and unknowns (missing value).

Cats show no difference here, and while the in-field return rate for dogs increase, it might be because there are much less unknown (missing) subtypes. Nevertheless, it has the benefit of showing a more accurate rate of in-field returns (7% in 2020).

Species Year Field_Strays RTH_Subtype Field_RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 265 Field Return 1 0.00
Cat 2019 265 Shelter Return 4 0.02
Cat 2019 265 Unknown 5 0.02
Cat 2020 331 Field Return 4 0.01
Cat 2020 331 Shelter Return 11 0.03
Cat 2020 331 Unknown 2 0.01
Dog 2019 1463 Field Return 53 0.04
Dog 2019 1463 Shelter Return 135 0.09
Dog 2019 1463 Unknown 292 0.20
Dog 2020 1631 Field Return 112 0.07
Dog 2020 1631 Shelter Return 345 0.21
Dog 2020 1631 Unknown 54 0.03

Shelter RTH Rate by Species

Here lies the improvement in cat RTH as seen in the overall table, whereas dogs’ rates stay pretty much the same.

Species Year OTC_Strays Shelter_RTH RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1715 41 0.02
Cat 2020 560 28 0.05
Dog 2019 4804 1257 0.26
Dog 2020 2867 773 0.27
Other 2019 14 1 0.07
Other 2020 23 1 0.04

RTH over time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.

Overall RTH

Again, we start with all RTH (both field and shelter), for cats and dogs. For dogs, December and January have noticeable spikes in both years. For cats, the rate is ever-slowly increasing, and the spike in April 2020 is due to a small intake amount.

Field RTH (Dogs)

This is the same figure, but only counting field strays, and showing only dogs due to cats’ low numbers. The different lines split the rate of return by Field RTH or in-shelter RTH, so in Dec 2019, for example, 29% of field stray intakes were returned in the shelter (outcome subtype was not ‘FIELD’) and an extra 7% were returned in the field. RTH dogs with missing subtypes were included in the Shelter category.

The in-shelter RTH numbers zigzag a lot while moderately decreasing over time, while Field returns show a slow increase peaking around May-July 2020, before slowly decreasing again later in 2020.

Shelter RTH

This figure only counts strays who did not come from the field. The trend for dogs is similar to the overall trend, and

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.

Stray Intakes by Month

Noticeable parts include the spikes in cats (May 2019) followed by a rapid decline stabilizing around March 2020, and a sharp drop in stray intakes in April 2020 (again, covid) followed by a slow increase towards end of year.

Stray Intake Subtypes

Across both years, 24% of strays come the field (counting Field and Field Own) and the vast majority over the counter. 5% of values are missing.

Money saved by RTH

This could be another useful metrics to reflect the benefits of RTH over other outcome types. It takes into account three components:

  1. The number of stray intakes with RTH outcome.
  2. The daily cost of care.
  3. The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays. This is shown in the table below – roughly 9 days for dogs and 6 for cats.

There were 1847 strays who got RTH in 2019 and 1451 in 2020. Assuming 50$ cost of daily care per dog, and given the length-of-stay differences, We can estimate that return-to-homes saved PACC \(1847*50*9=831,150\$\) in 2019 and \(1451*9*50=652,950\$\) in 2020.

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 2485 10.91
Cat RTO 100 5.00
Dog Other Outcomes 8025 12.37
Dog RTO 3298 3.37

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found ZIP

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by ZIP codes to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per ZIP code.

Stray Intake

The area around the shelter (85745) stands out even after the animals with a found location listing the shelter’s address were removed (about 150 of those). Generally, the numbers decrease the further the areas from the shelter.

RTH Rate

The one ZIP code further from Tuscon stands out – other than that, most areas are roughly similar.

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists. Except for the shelter’s ZIP code, the areas adjacent to it all stand out as more strays are found in them with roughly similar RTH rates. In the areas to the Northwest, 743 and 653, the RTH rates (visible in the middle tab) are lower than other close areas, which suggests a greater room for improvement.

Found and Outcome Zipcode

This map tried to get at the distances dogs go away from homes. In the lack of home addresses for found dogs, ZIP codes are used as a proxy. First, we looked at whether these two pairs of ZIP Codes were similar for dogs across the city:

  1. Finder and Found: only 37% similarity. This suggests that many people bring pets they found away from their neighborhood (which does not mean the pet also went far from where it lives – it could be close to home and the finder was far from his).
  2. Found and Outcome - this is better at getting at this question, assuming outcome ZIP for RTH dogs is the ZIP of the animal’s home. Unfortunately, there were only 969 dogs that were stray, RTH, and had an outcome ZIP. For these 969,

The overall same-ZIP rate was 67%; most dogs were found near where they live (although ZIP codes can be large).

The map below shows the percentage of animals found in a given ZIP code that also live their (i.e. were RTH with outcome ZIP in that same ZIP code). This is a bit lower for those found right around the shelter, which is expected, but pretty high elsewhere, with some ‘pockets’ with found dogs that seemed to have gone far from home.

RTH Method

This could be a useful field to track, given that it reflects how an RTO was achieved. The table below shows the outcome subtype for RTH animals, where some values seem to reflect RTH method, excluding the values of walk-in and field which were used 90%+ of the time (hence the low numbers below). Fewer value options might help improving data collection on this field.

Year str_to_title(outcome_subtype) N
2019 Phone 58
2019 Web 40
2019 Facebook 18
2019 Chip 15
2019 Tag Id 10
2019 Otc 9
2019 Letter 7
2019 Next-Door 7
2019 Id Tag 5
2019 Craigslist 2
2019 Petharbor 1
2020 Phone 52
2020 Web 49
2020 Facebook 36
2020 Chip 34
2020 Otc 16
2020 Letter 14
2020 Neighbor 10
2020 Next-Door 7
2020 Other 7
2020 Email 5
2020 Petharbor 3
2020 Pawboost 2
2020 Tag Id 2
2020 Id Tag 1

Checklist alignment

Data status

  1. Frequently missing values:
  • Intake reason is NA for 12191/40074 animals.
    • Outcome ZIP code: 23,644 NAs.
    • Found ZIP code: 5992 NAs.
    • Outcome subtype: 3682 NAs.
    • Outcome condition: 16063 NAs.
    • Intake subtype: 1816 NAs.
    • Weight: 1436 NAs.
  1. Intake subtype has 7 values assigned to less than 20 animals, could be removed to simplify.
  2. Outcome subtype - the presence of ways to indicate how a return was achieved stands out, but they are not used frequently. Here too there are multiple values that are rarely in use, which could be great for tracking how returns happen in the shelter.

Extra metrics

Other things we could show if we had the data for it:

  1. Exact distances traveled by lost dogs from home, if home address was collected for successful RTH.
  2. Prevalence of microchips across town (for example, are there areas from which more animals come in without chips?) and the RTH rates for animals found with/without chips.
  3. Reclaim fees (could be a yes/no to track fee waiving).
  4. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by public (if this data is accessible to the shelter; these two would allow showing $ saved by public RTH).